Guns Germs & Steel Cl (Tv Tie-In

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With a new chapter. The phenomenal bestseller--over 1.5 million copies sold--is now a major PBS special. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide. The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences. He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers. 32 illustrations.

Jared Diamond is professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Prologue Yali's Question

The regionally differing courses of history

13

(20)

PART ONE From Eden to Cajamarca

33

(50)

Up to the Starting Line

What happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.?

35

(18)

A Natural Experiment of History

How geography molded societies on Polynesian islands

53

(14)

Collision at Cajamarca

Why the Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spain

67

(16)

PART TWO The Rise and Spread of Food Production

83

(110)

Farmer Power

The roots of guns, germs, and steel

85

(8)

History's Haves and Have-Nots

Geographic differences in the onset of food production

93

(11)

To Farm or Not to Farm

Causes of the spread of food production

104

(10)

How to Make an Almond

The unconscious development of ancient crops

114

(17)

Apples or Indians

Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants?

131

(26)

Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and The Anna Karenina Principle

Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated?

157

(19)

Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes

Why did food production spread at different rates on different continents?